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Topic: Moderation

There is a severe lack of rule enforcement.

There are lots of AFK lvlers.

I've seen WPE Pro and attack rating hacks openly discussed in game (also, attack rating hack shouldn't even be possible).

As a new player these sort of things spoil the fun. We need GMs to moderate the game for cheaters. And possibly some anti-AFK mechanisms such as captcha or random events.

Last edited by iMouse (July 20th, 2024 5:37 AM)

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Re: Moderation

Captcha in a game is obnoxious. It is bad enough just using them on websites. Random events might be a better way to go.

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Re: Moderation

Also, unless there is a change in the wind, GMs and Ms have not been enforcing rule due to many years of neglect of the game, I am not sure at this point there would be much inspiration to enforce, due to the many years of people abusing the games mechanics, exploits, etc... But I might be wrong, and maybe it will happen. I am sure once a new clean server is made, with some of these holes and bugs fixed, there will be more enforcement.

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Re: Moderation

Hmm, I don't know about the AR hack, or other hacks. I wonder if the offenders can be incentivized to share the exploit with James to fix. Or, it's known but no easy solution at the moment. So, how to detect and enforce it?

I don't know the official stance on AFK/macroing. But, I've always felt that the game should be more engaging than repetitively clicking a single button, or being able to camp in one spot with tames or holding down a key. It puts enforcement into a constant reactive mode rather than just making the gameplay more enjoyable that you'd like to be there in person. Or, more engaging by requiring people to move around and react to a more dynamic game.

Now, if someone is disruptively AFK/macroing, like camping a spawn that another person actually at their computer wants to use. Then it seems like we could have a Moderator/GM have a reasonable check on the suspected player and kick them?

I think it's been several years since we had a stable player population, and most of the active GMs/Mods are gone.

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Re: Moderation

Master Wu wrote:

Hmm, I don't know about the AR hack, or other hacks. I wonder if the offenders can be incentivized to share the exploit with James to fix. Or, it's known but no easy solution at the moment. So, how to detect and enforce it?

I don't know the official stance on AFK/macroing. But, I've always felt that the game should be more engaging than repetitively clicking a single button, or being able to camp in one spot with tames or holding down a key. It puts enforcement into a constant reactive mode rather than just making the gameplay more enjoyable that you'd like to be there in person. Or, more engaging by requiring people to move around and react to a more dynamic game.

Now, if someone is disruptively AFK/macroing, like camping a spawn that another person actually at their computer wants to use. Then it seems like we could have a Moderator/GM have a reasonable check on the suspected player and kick them?

I think it's been several years since we had a stable player population, and most of the active GMs/Mods are gone.

A simple anticheat can be made to detect common programs, like WPE Pro (used to modify/send packets to the server), TSearch and most common hex editors (ar hack), just by recognizing programs by name, this is enough to avoid most current players to cheat. Then some may modify program name, window, etc to bypass that, then just code the game to detect modified packets, people afk level by modifying a packet, i.e, they get the packet that is responsible for sending "aaaa" message on chat, then get the packet responsible for hitting a tiger, then whenever an "aaaa" packet is detected, it triggers the hitting tiger packet, so you can simply run a macro to keep saying "aaaa" on chat and you'll keep killing that tiger whenever it spawns. So, you'll need a script that detect whether the hitting tiger packet is being triggered by a message packet instead of clicking the target. For AR Hack maybe a memory editing detector, idk, or changing stuff from client side to server side, idk how AR Hack actually works, i never used it.

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Re: Moderation

This is a very good point. I haven't been enforcing much just because i didn't know the stance of this current client. Really would love some direction on this subject. Is this beta for something bigger to come, or should we enforce rules now and treat it like before.

WPE is the biggest cause for AFK leveling. basically, how it works is they're finding the server packet using windows packet editor.
Find Monsters packet
Find the damage packet to that monster
creating a text packet to emulate damage to their target
then basically creating a text macro to auto hit their target from several tiles away.

An anti-cheat would be the way to go.

Other games enforce Perma bans for offenses like this. WPE is really what killed the activity to Faldon when there was nobody here to enforce rules. Tsearch killed PvP as well.

As the only current Moderator for the game, James and Matt I'm an open book and I'll do whatever you guys' feel is right going forward.

-Z

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Re: Moderation

Hm. It's not my plan this week, but I'd been thinking about wrapping Faldon's protocol in SSL. Does WPE handle that? Also, does it stealth itself in any way from other programs? Pretty easy to check if a process or DLL is running.

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Re: Moderation

James wrote:

Hm. It's not my plan this week, but I'd been thinking about wrapping Faldon's protocol in SSL. Does WPE handle that? Also, does it stealth itself in any way from other programs? Pretty easy to check if a process or DLL is running.

AFAIK, Wpe does not stealth itself. You should be able to detect it. However, its old and it mostly only runs on old OS. IDK if other Packet Editors do stealth them self.

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Re: Moderation

James wrote:

Hm. It's not my plan this week, but I'd been thinking about wrapping Faldon's protocol in SSL. Does WPE handle that? Also, does it stealth itself in any way from other programs? Pretty easy to check if a process or DLL is running.

WPE Pro attaches a DLL (WpeSpy.dll) to the process and adds a JMP instruction to the beginning of the WinSock functions that it intercepts. It supports intercepting the functions send, sendto, recv, recvfrom, WSASend, WSASendTo, WSARecv, WSARecvFrom.

It doesn't stealth itself.

Last edited by iMouse (August 6th, 2024 6:24 AM)